David Platt: Antonio Conte’s Italy stars are on a different planet to our England flops
They will buy into tactics and work on them each day. English players get bored after half an hour
ON the day that England failed so miserably against Iceland, Italy were ending Spain’s long reign as European champions.
Yet we were supposed to have, in Roy Hodgson’s words, a “young, hungry and extremely talented group of players”.
In Italy before the finals, everyone thought they were sending one of the worst squads to contest a major tournament in their history.
However, neither coach Antonio Conte nor any of the players will have thought they can’t win this.
Why? Because they will have a plan to win it, a plan to win every game even if, man for man, the opposition is better than them — as Belgium and Spain were.
He will have a plan, a set of tactics, for each game that every player will fully buy into and work on and concentrate on.
There will be no egos, or quest for individual glory, there will just be the plan.
You might wonder why Conte is so animated on the sideline. It is because he has it all visualised in his mind, in every detail, and if anyone is deviating from that plan, however slightly, he has to remind them.
He isn’t changing anything, he is sticking to how they will win that game.
Italian players buy into it because they are tactically minded. They are brought up that way.
English players are not. I wasn’t but I had to change very quickly when I went to Italy.
I remember in one of my early games with Bari chasing down a full-back to win the ball, because that is what I did.
But I turned round and there was no team-mate within 30 yards of me because that wasn’t in the plan.
“Let them have the ball and come on to us; don’t go chasing them” was the message.
We were facing one of the great AC Milan sides early in my first season with Bari, against the likes of Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten and Frank Rijkaard.
We worked for four days on tactics to stop them and very nearly did, losing just 1-0.
When I was at Sampdoria, under Sven-Goran Eriksson, we played Bobby Robson’s Porto in a Cup Winners’ Cup game and lost 1-0 at home in the first leg. They were better than us and stronger than us.
So Sven took us away to a secluded base for four days and worked on tactics every day as to how we were going to turn it round.
We were an attacking team with the likes of Roberto Mancini and Attilio Lombardi but we went to Porto and defended on our halfway line and just invited them on to us.
We nicked a goal and went through on penalties.
I actually remember Pietro Vierchowod bang on his door begging for more tactical work when Sven thought we needed a breather.
Can you see an English player doing that?
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I am sure Sven tried to apply tactical thinking to England but found it much harder than when he was in Italy. Although you look back and it seems like a golden era with England under him in comparison to now.
How could a coach of the class of Fabio Capello fail with England?
He was applying what had worked so successfully in Italy but it wasn’t working with English players.
In Italy, they will work for three or four days ahead of a game for 90 minutes a day purely on tactics — and every player will be fully concentrated.
You will lose English players after half an hour of this. You have to make training fun, players want to have crossing and shooting sessions, or five-a-sides.
When planning a session you have to be mindful that your tactics have to be hinted at amongst the enjoyment of a session, not worked on diligently until everyone knows their own job, his team-mates’ jobs and how they all complement each other.
I am not criticising here, I am just explaining the completely different mindset — and that is what we need to change.
Italian sides go out to nullify the opposition and then take their chance.
They don’t care if people might find it dull, they just want to win the game.
That is why, no matter what team they have, they are invariably in the latter stages of tournaments.
Against Spain, it was a tactical masterclass the way Conte got his team to sit deep and pack the middle area, forcing Spain out wide.
That immediately nullified Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas and Sergio Busquets.
David Silva might pick up the ball out wide but he always likes to come inside.
And when he did, he found that area of the field packed.
From yesterday, Conte will have been working on exactly how this Italian team are going to stop world champions Germany next and nick a win.
Now look at England. What was the plan in any of their games?
Against Iceland, a player would get the ball and think about a killer pass. But it wasn’t on so he would pass it to someone else, who would then think about the killer pass, which also wasn’t on.
So in the end it became a hopeful, predictable ball.
There was no plan to move the ball around, to move Iceland around, to create those openings.
I remember Louis van Gaal talking about coaching players in the mind and you wonder whether his methods were just too alien for too many at Manchester United.
It’s work, sometimes it is boring. People say that Italian teams are boring.
But Italian teams know how to win.
We don’t.
